Listen With Others

As soon as I had downloaded this puzzle on Friday evening, ready for a solve sometime at the weekend, I knew from the setter that the following day must be the first of April. Dolos has had two previous outings here plus one in Magpie (rated D). In Listener 3559, Playfair, the seven sentences in the preamble were actually clues to the unclued entries and no. 3871, Subliminal Symbolism, was a lipogram (e-less) with some additional goings-on.

The clues were given in alphabetical order — of themselves not their answers. This meant that the usual help given to unsolved clues by their position between initial letters of solved answers was not available. Thankfully, Dolos ensured that his clues were fairly forgiving and I managed to make a start on jigsawing the grid fairly quickly. The grid was complete much sooner than I had anticipated.

Selecting the last letter of clues in alphabetical order of their answers explained why sastrugi, tout nouveau and nerka made an appearance. Favourite clue was probably Violinist’s possible key in note run, following Köchel (8) for KREISLER (not that I’d heard of him) [ISLE in (RE + R) after K].

As I picked out the last letters of the appropriate clues, I got as far as The clues were al… when the penny dropped and we finished with …ready in normal grid order. Congratulations if you realised this at any point before I did!

Thanks for a nice bit of fun, Dolos, and I look forward to 2028.